The bargaining unit for KPFK’s SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild / American Federation of Radio and Television Artists) affiliated employees notifies members that the schedule reductions and layoffs announced by GM Radford on Monday at a staff meeting and later that evening on the radio station during a Report to the Listener, were not negotiated with nor agreed to by the labor union that represents the workers.
Continue reading SAG-AFTRA: KPFK Staff Reductions Never Negotiated With Union
Leslie Radford presented this work schedule reduction less than three months after being hired by Margy Wilkinson as the station’s general manager.
The reductions include three staff members, 2 unionized and at least 4 months of reduction to half time for the station’s remaining 50 staffers. Continue reading KPFK Work Reductions Letter – August 17, 2015
Among other questionable Radford programming decisions at KPFK contributing to plummeting fund drive results, the new manager put the struggling pledge drive on a “break” this weekend to air a 30-hour Afrikan Mental Liberation Marathon, an independently produced dawn to dusk black nationalist-oriented program . The program has disturbed queer-identified listeners with aggressively homophobic positions presented with little to no counterpoint.
A KPFK staffer provided this clip of an interview with female psychiatrist Frances Cress Welsing in which she compares queer sex to human-dog mating, states that male semen is a dietary protein like sweet potatoes and greens, and that homosexuality in Ancient Greece was caused by shock at the larger sizes of African genitals – among other bizarre statements deeply disrespectful towards LBGT people. You can hear for yourself here.
Berkeley – Despite receiving over $9.3 million dollars in charitable contributions between October 1, 2014 and May 31, 2015, Pacifica Radio has indicated that it is unable to pay a $55,000 outstanding bill to auditor Armanino LLC in order to meet legal requirements to continue operating as a licensed not for profit organization in the State of California. California’s Nonprofit Integrity Act requires all California charitable corporations with gross revenues of $2 million or more to prepare annual financial statements audited by an independent certified public accountant (CPA). The audited financial statements must be made available for inspection by the Attorney General and the public no later than nine months after the close of the fiscal year covered by the financial statement. Pacifica’s deadline was June 30, 2015. The radio network is in the middle of an investigation launched in December of 2014 by the Registry of Charitable Trusts at the California Attorney General’s office.
Originally posted June 1, 2015
Berkeley-Controversy continues to rage at Pacifica’s Los Angeles station KPFK-FM, after former board chair Margy Wilkinson appointed former board member and factional crony Leslie Radford as the new permanent general manager at Pacifica’s LA station KPFK, one day before vacating her position as interim executive director. Incoming ED John Proffitt was driving across the country to begin his tenure on May 11th when the hire was made. The manuever has thrown Pacifica into chaos and deeply depressed fund drive revenues at KPFK. As recently as 2013, KPFK was the network’s most successful fundraiser. Continue reading Uprising at KPFK
Originally posted May 12, 2015
Berkeley-Board chair Margy Wilkinson, who deposed her predecessor in March of 2014 and then served as Pacifica’s interim executive director for most of the last 15 months (briefly interrupted for 90 days by Bernard Duncan who departed for New Zealand), pulled a last-minute fast one a day and a half prior to new ED John Proffitt’s arrival in Berkeley by appointing former board member and factional crony Leslie Radford as the new permanent general manager at Pacifica’s LA station KPFK. Continue reading Beware The Last Days
